Grey wagtail

Grey wagtails are balletic birds, never still for an instant, always twirling and darting here and there in search of insects. I photographed this beauty in the river Tees, downstream from Abbey bridge at Egglestone. The river is fast and turbulent there, rushing through a narrow rocky gorge, and its spray encourages luxurient growth of mosses and liverworts at the water's edge - a favourite feeding ground for wagtails in search of small insects that live in this riverbank vegetation.

 

Globe flower and meadow saxifrage

 Teesdale is a favourite destination for botanists in spring, principally because it is home to the stunning blue flowers of spring gentian Gentiana verna, which is usually at its best in the first two weeks of May. But the dale is full of botanical treasures, including the beautiful globe flower Trollius europaeus (below). Last week we found it in a place where we've never seen it before, on the bank of the river Tees downstream from Egglestone abbey bridge.

This has also been a wonderful late spring for meadow saxifrage Saxifraga granulosa (below). While not nationally rare, it is a declining species. We found one meadow absolutely full of its elegant white flowers, which remind me of the finest porcelain. Meadow saxifrage reproduces by seed and also by tiny vegetative buds called bulbils, at the base of the leaves. I suspect that one of the reasons why the plant sometimes reaches high densities in meadows is that the bulbils are transported and dispersed on mud on the hooves of livestock, that traditionally graze the 'aftermath' in hay meadows after the hay has been cut. 

Chilled roe deer

Most of my encounters with roe deer have been brief - often just a bobbing white tail disappearing through the trees. But this one, near Romaldkirk in Teesdale, was different: we stood, looking at each other for a couple of minutes, before the deer slowly turned away and ambled into an old hazel coppice. 

One of those privileged encounters I'm likely to remember for a long time, on an early autumn day when the sunlight showed off to perfection the beautiful coat of this gentle animal.

The Natural History of Upper Teesdale

Durham Wildlife Trust has produced an entirely new edition of The Natural History of Upper Teesdale, perfectly timed to coincide with the blooming of spring gentians, perhaps the dale's most famous wild flower.

The first edition of this indispensable guide (below), with only 70 pages illustrated with line drawings, appeared in 1965 and has run through four editions. The new fifth edition is almost an entirely new book. Financial support from the Heritage Lottery Fund has enabled the Trust to expand its size and scope, extend it to 198 pages and print in a larger format with an attractive easy to read layout, with high quality colour photographs and illustrations throughout.

In the new edition (above) nine chapters cover the history of habitation in the dale, its weather and climate, geology, geomorphology and glacial history, its flora and vegetation and the origins of the unique Teesdale assemblage of rare flowers growing alongside more familiar species, its fauna, freshwater life and conservation, all written by outstanding experts in the field. Edited by Trust chair Steve Gater, this is a magnificent achievement by all concerned.

This is a perfect introduction for new visitors to the dale, while those who know it well with find new and fascinating insights. 

The Natural History of Upper Teesdale is available from Durham Wildlife Trust’s Rainton Meadows and Low Barns Visitor Centres, with members able to buy at a specially reduced price of £8 with a £2 postage and packing charge. 

The book can also be purchased by non-members for £10 with a £2 postage and packing charge.

Copies can also be ordered by phone or email from the Trust on mail@durhamwt.co.uk or 0191 584 3112. A £2 post and packing charge applies. 

Teesdale based book design company Mosaic (www.mosaicteesdale.co.uk), who worked on the project, will also have copied available for sale.

Spring on Widdybank Fell

Today's Guardian Country Diary is about the botanical jewels that grow in one of the last places that spring reaches in the North Pennines. This part of Upper Teesdale is an almost treeless landscape and even in mid-May the grass has only just begun to grow, but tucked down amongst the heather there are tough little flowers that survive in one of the harshest landscapes in England.

This is the view from Widdybank fell, one of the 'hot-spots' for these rare wild flowers. In the distance, across Cow Green reservoir, you can see (l-r) Great Dun fell, Little Dun fell and Cross fell. The vegetation across much of the landscape that you can see here is less that knee-high, frozen in winter, windswept and subject to high rainfall.

Nestling on the ground around me, when I took this photograph, there were .....

.... hundreds of bird's-eye primroses Primula farinosa .....

.... along with the intensely blue blooms of spring gentian Gentiana verna

You really need to get down on your hands and knees to appreciate these tiny but tough little plants. They draw visitors back to this bleak spot in May every year, to appreciate their extraordinary beauty.

The Teesdale Rhino

Thursday's Guardian Country Diary is about this little beetle. 

We have log piles all around the garden, where the remains of trees that have grown here in the past and are slowly rotting away play host to all sorts of insects. In amongst the logs there's holly, hornbean, whitebeam, cherry, walnut, plum, ash and several different conifers. If they had all been left to grow to full size our small garden would have become a dense forest.

My wife found this beetle in one of the log piles and since I couldn't identify it I posted a couple of photographs on the wonderful iSpot web site.

Within a few days it had been identified by Darren Mann, coleopterist at Oxford University Museum of Natural History, as a female rhinoceros beetle, Sinodendron cyclindricum. Unlike the male of the species, she doesn't have a rhinoceros-like horn on her nose but a few days later we found a mate for her in a grove of beech trees in Teesdale. 

At the time we had no idea what we had found because the beetle had been crawling under loose bark and its head was covered in spiders' webs. It looked like another female but when we took it home to clean it up, gently removing its entanglements, it .....

... revealed this magnificent rhino horn, tipped with a brush of ginger hairs.

From this angle that flat, plate-like front to the thorax reminds me of the dinosaur Triceratops.

This beetle is about the length of my thumbnail.

So what does it use that horn for? It can't be feeding, otherwise surely the female would have one too. Apparently they feed on tree sap.

It must be sexual ornament. It would be good to put two males together and see if they use it as some sort of weapon in a contest for females.So that's my next move - to try to find more and see how they interact.

Meanwhile this male has joined the female in the wood pile, where I hope they are breeding.

No room for shrinking violets in the woodland wild flower competition

Thursday's Guardian Country Diary is about the dog violet Viola riviniana, one of the earliest woodland plants to come into broom.

Spring offers a narrow window of opportunity for woodland wild flowers that are pollinated by insects. Bloom too soon and there won't be many insects about; bloom too late and the overhead tree leaf canopy will have plunged the woodland floor into deep shade, restricting the plant's capacity to grow vigorously and fill its seeds.

Dog violets are one of the first species to bloom. Their nectar is in a spur behind the flower and is mostly accessible to long-tongued bees. An early display of attractive flowers advertises the flowers to these insects, that are few and far-between in woodlands in late March and April.

By the time that May arrives the rest of the woodland flora - wood anemones, wild garlic and bluebells - has transformed the woodland into a sea of flowers. Then dog violets face two challenges - intense competition for pollinators and shade from other species that have grown up around them.

Dog violet's answer to the challenge is to switch to a different type of flowering called cleistogamy, where flower buds develop and never open, self-pollinating in the bud stage and producing seeds without help from insects. They produce these cleistogamous flower buds, unnoticed, right through the summer.

A cleistogamous flower bud of dog violet. It will self-pollinate and produce a seed capsule without ever opening.

There are dog violets that escape the constraints of woodland life and flower in more open habitats like hedge banks, and its these that always produce the best and longest floral display. We found this lovely example growing in a crevice in a boulder beside the river Tees downstream from Egglestone. It's one of the finest violet floral performances that I've ever seen.

I suspect that the seed must have washed down river during floods and lodged in this crevice, where it's rooted in the cool moisture of the rock fissure but exposed to full sunlight that has enabled it to bloom so profusely, even when the mosses covering the rock withered in a week of warm, dry weather.

Woodland walk along the river Tees that J.M.W.Turner trod 200 years ago

This is the view of the river Tees from Abbey bridge near Egglestone, on a tranquil spring day. When the snow melts in Upper Teesdale this becomes a raging torrent, roaring through the rocky gorge. 

The woodland on the steep banks of the river here is exceptionally beautiful in spring, carpeted with wild flowers. Last week wood anemones were the star of the show; next week the bluebells will take over.

Fallen trees are left to gently decay and often develop their own 'garden' of flowers as they rot - like this one with a flora of wood anemone, ramsons and herb Robert.

Last week the bluebells had just begun to flower but it will be early May before the tree leave canopy begins to close over them. The fully-grown trees are mostly sycamore and oak.

The path winds through a dense carpet of wood anemones, high above the river.

Wood speedwell Veronica montana

When we arrived there was still a chill in the air and dew on the leaves, so the wood anemone flowers were all nodding downwards ...

..... but by mid-morning, as the sun climbed higher in the sky, they turned to face it.

This wood anemone had purple leaves.

Some early wild cherry blossom, hanging over the river.

Wood sorrel, nestling against a moss-covered tree base. The leaves fold down at night, like triangular tents.

Beyond the woodland the path passes through pastures, with ground ivy Glechoma hederacea flowering in the shelter of a dry stone wall.

Last week the first influx of warblers arrived, with this willow warbler and blackcaps singing

Last time we passed this way the elms were just coming into flower. Today their clusters of seeds were well-formed.

A bee-fly, a parasite of mining bees, sunbathing in a clearing.

Crane-flies mating.

A comma butterfly soaking up the spring sunshine after a long hibernation.

In 1816 J.M.W. Turner must have walked this footpath and perhaps sat somewhere near here to sketched this scene, at the confluence of the river Greta and the river Tees, which he painted in 1818. I like to think that perhaps he sat under this ancient oak, which would have been more youthful then, to view the scene, which you can see in his painting by clicking here.